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Tuesday, 16 April 2013

Chinese Grand Prix: Shanghai Round-Up

"It's very close to call and a very open championship." ...Fernando Alonso

Before the Grand Prix things were looking perfectly set up for a closely fought race, but in the end Alonso made the victory look easy. During the closing stages as he cruised away from the chasing pack he even had to be told by his team not to push, to which Fernando replied, rather ominously for his championship rivals, "I'm not pushing."

Onto my tips, and retirements were my undoing this week, as Nico Rosberg and Mark Webber's DNFs meant losses straight away for a big chunk of my tips. Of my remaining tips a few of them did okay, but not enough to record a profit.

Here's the round-up of exactly how things turned out...

Pre-Qualifying Tips:

Race Winner (eachway):10 points eachway* (20 points total) on Mark Webber at 9.0 - LOSS
Fuel problems during qualifying meant that Webber's car was unable to provide the required FIA fuel sample and he therefore started from the back of the grid, effectively ruining any chance he had of victory.

* SkyBet pay 1/5 the odds for first 3 places for eachway bets.

Podium Finish:15 points on Lewis Hamilton at 3.0 (Price Boost) - WIN 45 points
It was touch and go there at the end, and you could hear the panic in Lewis' voice as he cut through the traffic and shouted over the radio, "Blue flag!" but in the end he just managed to hang on to the final podium position by 0.203 of a second.

Top Six Finish:20 points on Nico Rosberg at 1.83 - LOSS
Nico's race never really got going as he suffered from understeer in the early laps which then got worse after the pitstops. The problem was identified as a broken rear anti-roll bar and it led to Rosberg's retirement on lap 23.

Fastest Qualifier:15 points on Sebastian Vettel at 2.0 - LOSS
Going into qualifying it was clear that Red Bull's one lap race wasn't quite as impressive as usual and therefore Vettel went for a different qualifying strategy which sacrificed pole with the race more in mind.

Qualifying Margin:10 points on 0.2 Seconds Or More at 1.91 - WIN 19 points
Lewis put in an excellent qualifying lap and had a 0.277 qualifying advantage over Kimi Raikkonen who qualified second on the grid.

To Finish In The Points (Top Ten Finish):20 points on Sergio Perez at 1.73 - LOSS
Perez had a difficult Grand Prix and eventually finished just outside the points scoring positions in 11th place.

Making an overall return of 64 points and therefore an overall loss of 36 points.

Post-Qualifying Tips:

Race Winner:10 points eachway (20 points total) on Kimi Raikkonen at 4.5 - Eachway return of 17 points
Raikkonen's Lotus received a bit of nose damage in an incident with Sergio Perez which caused minor handling issues, but overall Kimi still had fairly decent pace. He was unable to put any pressure on Alonso for the victory, but given the circumstances Kimi was reasonably satisfied with second place.

Podium Finish:20 points on Nico Rosberg at 3.25 - LOSS
Mercedes have got decent speed but they need to sort out their reliability issues, particularly on Nico's car, as this was Rosberg's second retirement of the season.

Top Six Finish:20 points on Mark Webber 3.25 - LOSS
A clever strategy by Red Bull saw Webber pit after only one lap in order to get the soft tyres out of the way, and for a time it looked like the strategy was going to pay off as once the first pit-stops were out of the way Mark wasn't too far off the front runners. However, it wasn't to be, as a coming together with Vergne forced a pit-stop slightly earlier than planned and Mark's race then came to an end on his out-lap when his Red Bull lost a wheel, thankfully without causing an accident.

To Finish In The Points (Top Ten Finish):20 points on Daniel Ricciardo at 2.63 - WIN 53 points
Ricciardo
drove an impressive race and despite having to pit early on for a new nose still managed to finish ahead of a Lotus and a McLaren, which perhaps suggests that it's worth keeping an eye on Ricciardo in the Top Ten market at future Grand Prix.

Making an overall return of 70 points from 100 points and therefore an overall loss of 30 points.

We head to Bahrain with three different winning drivers from three different teams, so all the signs look promising for another exciting championship. As usual I'll be making a set of pre and post qualifying tips for the Bahrain Grand Prix and and then seeing which set of tips performs best.